United Front: How Latvian and Estonian Disinformers Exploited Fear Ahead of Elections
The fight against wind turbines and imaginary mosques, stories of stolen elections – in the local elections, Estonian populists used the same themes as their Latvian counterparts.
“The elections are over, but the fight against wind turbines will continue.” This is what the Estonian Conservative People’s Party (EKRE) – the leading populist force in the country – wrote on its website after the Estonian municipal elections in the fall of 2025.
Along with claims that Estonia’s e-voting system is insecure, EKRE’s main campaign theme was the fight against wind energy.
EKRE politicians began spreading disinformation about this at least a year before the elections. Interest groups involved in the “wind turbine war” tried to stop the development of wind farms using conspiracy theories and violent language. Fringe environmental organizations, conspiracy theorists, and a group calling themselves “Estonian indigenous people” acted as a single network. This eventually led to genuine hysteria in public.
Since the campaign proved to be relatively successful – the construction of several wind farms was at least temporarily halted – EKRE decided to make opposition to wind turbines the central theme of the campaign.
At least a month before the elections, EKRE began distributing leaflets on the streets, inciting fear and using myths that experts have long since debunked. For example, they baselessly claimed that turbine blades cannot be recycled; that they emit toxic substances; and that the turbines themselves cause various diseases. None of these claims is true.
Almost all of the party’s candidates announced their opposition to wind farms in their campaigns. For some, it was the only promise they made. Because EKRE talked about it so much, it forced other parties to take a stand, and wind turbines became a major issue in almost all constituencies.
In Latvia, disinformation about wind energy has remained consistently high for more than a year now, ever since municipalities have been holding public consultations on new projects one after another. Populist parties, or at least some of their individual politicians, are also involved in spreading it.
Questioning the elections
Election theft is another theme shared by populists in both Estonia and Latvia. Last year, before the Riga elections, several pro-Russian parties tried to mobilise voters with hints that “otherwise your vote will be stolen.” Meanwhile, Latvia First (LPV) tried to use the “stolen elections” argument once it realised that the hoped-for control of the capital had slipped through its fingers. A couple of days after the elections, it declared that the results were rigged, filed complaints with law enforcement authorities, and called people out into the streets – albeit with very little response.
Some in Estonian politics have long used the opportunity to question the fairness of electronic elections. Historically, their main critic has been the Centre Party (in Latvia, its closest counterpart would be Saskaņa – ed.). In 2013, CP accused the right-wing parties of falsifying the results. An NGO affiliated with the party ran a campaign in Tallinn, claiming in 68 billboards around the city that “they can erase your vote,” “every e-vote could be a threat to Estonia’s independence,” and “they can give your vote to whoever they want.”
In recent years, this banner has been taken up by EKRE, which also ran a large campaign in these elections. It is the only serious political party that deliberately lies about e-voting as part of a broader strategy. This includes targeting state institutions and the so-called deep state. EKRE does not hide that its tactics are based on the US MAGA movement supporting Donald Trump, for which questioning the integrity of the elections is one of its tactics.
EKRE was also joined by the aforementioned Center Party, but it did not go so far as to call the elections stolen.
Meanwhile, trust in e-voting is steadily declining. Research data from the Estonian State Chancellery shows that in June 2024, 59% of the population trusted e-voting. By September 2025, this figure had dropped to 54%. The number of people who do not trust e-voting at all has increased from 20% to 29% during this time.
Fighting against non-existent mosques
Resistance to mosques is also a recognizable campaign theme in Latvia. In Estonia, EKRE did this – they made loud statements against the construction of a mosque in Tartu.
The same fight with the imaginary mosque took place before the Riga elections. National Alliance (NA) candidate Liāna Langa pulled out a year-old article that reported on the local Muslim community’s desire to receive a building permit to expand the existing prayer rooms in the cultural center. NA mayoral candidate Edvards Ratnieks announced on social networks that “we must take care of Latvia’s national interests and not allow the problems that exist in Europe. Such a construction plan is the intention of the relevant community. We see this in previous episodes of programs. We know that this relevance is only growing, because migration has increased”. Ratnieks spoke about the imaginary mosque and immigrants allegedly creating a threat to security on the streets in almost every interview (You can read a fact-check of his statements here ).
Then the ZZS wanted to amend the law by holding municipal referendums on any new building of worship that does not conform to “Latvian traditions and Christian values enshrined in the Constitution.” The changes have not yet been adopted.
In Estonia, disinformation did not help EKRE. It lost a significant share of seats in local councils (from 14.1% in 2021 to 9.7% remaining). The party has now started collecting signatures for Estonia’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention on combating domestic violence, copying the tactics of Latvian populists.
Sowing fear of the unknown
Other fear-mongering tactics, as well as public calls for hatred and violence, were also used during the Estonian election campaign. However, these are isolated incidents, not yet a trend.
For example, Sandra Laur, a young politician from Isamaa (Fatherland), who won the elections in Tartu and secured a seat on the city council on her first try, stated in almost every TikTok video that she would fight against bringing “Muslim cutthroats” and “Swedish recidivists” to Estonia. Laur did not specify exactly how prisoners currently in prison would endanger the city life of Tartu, thereby spreading Islamophobia (Estonia plans to reach an agreement with Sweden to transfer 600 prisoners to Tartu, as there are free places in the prison there. The agreement on the transfer of Swedish prisoners stipulates that only healthy, adult long-term prisoners who are not radicalized will be accepted – ed.).
Kris Kärner, better known as “Istoprocent”, a content creator on streaming platforms popular among young people, also ran on the Isamaa list. His views are far-right, and he attracts followers by inciting hatred.
For example, Kärner claims that Tartu is the “capital of pederasts”, suggests deporting all blacks and expelling all women from the government, hanging the Reform Party, and shooting the Social Democrats by “pinning them to the wall and shooting them in the back of the head”.
Kärner had the second-best result on the Isamaa list. With almost 1,600 votes, he won a seat on the Tartu city council.
Isamaa’s youth organization also incited violence on social media. Namely, Noor Isamaa (Young Fatherland) posted an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated video on TikTok where Isamaa chairman Urmas Reinsalu beats up the Reform Party Prime Minister Kristen Michal. In the video, the AI-Michal asks if he can join the highly polling Isamaa, to which the AI-Reinsalu responds by beating him up. Youth organizations from other parties also made jokes and criticized opponents in their clips, but fist-waving has not been seen before.
Resistance to “fascist forces”
Another well-known narrative in Latvia, used by politicians supporting the Kremlin’s views in Estonian elections, was the use of Soviet monuments in the fight for the votes of older Russian-speaking people in Ida-Virumaa county.
For example, Narva politician Mikhail Stalnukhin (formerly of the Center Party) posted a TikTok video of himself standing in the square where the now-removed memorial plaques used to stand. “I know of only one force that dreams of removing everything dedicated to the liberators. This force is fascist. It is an open manifestation of Nazism. And now these monuments have been removed,” he said.
Another topic Stalnukhin raised was the transition to Estonian-language education, which he claims will deprive Russian-speaking children of opportunities to learn.
Stalnukhin and his electoral alliance won in Narva by a large margin. Now he wants to be mayor of the city on the Russian border.
Running on the list of the pro-Russian party Koos (Together), whose leader Aivo Peterson is on trial for treason, was activist Genadi Afanasyev. He posted numerous propaganda posts daily to the “KOOS” Facebook group, which has eight thousand followers. Afanasyev mostly posts clips from Russian propaganda channels, shares anti-NATO and anti-EU narratives, AI-generated memes, and news. The goal is to convince followers that Ukraine has lost the war, Russia is winning, and therefore, establishing friendly relations with the Kremlin is the only path to peace.
Afanasyev occasionally publishes statements directly from the website of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). For example: “The Press Office of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation announces: Kiev and Warsaw are preparing a major provocation in Poland to blame Russia and Belarus for it.”
The surge of disinformers
Traditionally, in Estonia, disinformation has been used openly to sway voters mainly by EKRE and its splinter party, the Estonian Nationalist and Conservative Party (EERK). The 2025 municipal elections showed that fear-mongering and dividing society was much more widely used strategy.
More purveyors of disinformation and conspiracy theorists – many of whom have gained notoriety on social media and are well known to Delfi’s fact-checking team – ran for parties and electoral alliances than in previous years.
These people have been gathering followers and supporters in Estonia for years by spreading disinformation about vaccination, the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental protection, Russia’s war in Ukraine, etc. But above all, they are united by a favorable attitude towards the Kremlin.
Most of them ran for the new political movement “Plan B,” which gained popularity this summer by opposing restrictions imposed to curb the spread of African swine fever and spreading disinformation about the disease. However, some also ran for the EERK and EKRE.
However, they did not fare well in the elections. Most of them received fewer than 100 votes in their districts and did not enter the municipalities. This shows that although they have significant influence and followers on social media, this does not yet translate into good electoral results (it was a different story in Latvia, where they gained one third of the seats).
AI fertilizers
More dangerous and popular among young people are content creators who specialize in extremist and rage-baiting content. There is also a growing trend of using AI-based tools to produce cheap political AI slop content.
One example is the Facebook account “Clara Cass,” which was built entirely with the help of AI and gained 2,600 Facebook friends in a few months. Before the election, “Clara” began posting AI-generated content about government politicians. The posts used the hashtag #valimised2025, but the videos themselves were in English. The posts looked innocent – one digging potatoes, another raising taxes – but they used disinformation narratives. One video repeated anti-vaccination messages, while another suggested that infected animals should not be killed to contain African swine fever.
The account EKRE Notsud (“EKRE Piglets”) was active on TikTok before the elections. Its description reads: “Fairy tales that destroy EKRE’s lies. We answer them with their own methods.” The videos were AI-generated videos in Estonian, depicting EKRE politicians as pigs. The content is fabricated. For example, one of the videos tells how Mart Helme allowed the FSB to recruit him in Moscow.
Written by Marta Vunš (Delfi Estonia)
Latvian part contributed by Evita Puriņa (Re:Baltica)
Edited by Sanita Jemberga (Re:Baltica)
Technical assistance by Madara Eihe
INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM NEEDS INDEPENDENT FINANCING If you like our work, support us! LV38RIKO0001060112712
